Today Poliça announced their fourth album, When We Stay Alive, will be released on January 31st, 2020, via Memphis Industries. The band has also shared the brooding, propulsive first single “Driving” alongside an Isaac Gale-directed video; the song is available now as a double-single featuring non-album track B-side “trash in bed,” co-produced by Boys Noize. Poliça have also announced an extensive run of 2020 tour dates throughout North America, the UK, and Europe; a current itinerary is below and tickets will go on sale at 10am local time this Friday, October 11th.
When Poliça’s singer Channy Leaneagh fell off her roof while clearing ice in early 2018, she smashed her L1 vertebrae and battered her spine, leaving her in a brace with limited mobility for months. Yet When We Stay Alive, is not about one debilitating accident. It’s about the redemptive power of rewriting your story in order to heal, and reclaiming your identity as a result.
Of “Driving,” Leaneagh explains, “Laying in bed, as I healed, I would dream of running in green grass and tears would pour from my eyes. Running in the tall tear grass; imagine wanting life and the want remains.’ That is a feeling to hold onto, that life is worth living even when all signs point no.’”
In the still silence of healing, she found that a multitude of feelings were becoming very loud. Leaneagh realized her self-identity had become attached to her experiences of physical and mental trauma, and she began to consider what it would be like to live without the past as a burden. “I felt there were many things I could look at and say, ‘This happened to me but I’m okay now. It’s not happening anymore and I got the care I needed for it. Now it’s time to rewrite the story I tell about myself and to myself,’” she explains.
While half of When We Stay Alive was written before the fall, and half afterwards, the tracks meld together in a coherent and redemptive sonic whole. Those written before the fall relay ideas with a more heightened sense of anxiety and distress. Inspired by the power found in her healing process, on the second batch of songs Leaneagh tried a slightly different approach, working to reevaluate her past, difficult personal experiences and bring in a sense of insight, strength, and light that perhaps wasn’t there at the time.
When We Stay Alive possesses a new confidence in its sound, reflected in its fierce, determined songs and anchored by the heavy synths and punctuating beats of Poliça co-founder and producer Ryan Olson. Over the last several years Olson and Leaneagh have widely collaborated with musicians from all over the world: both with Bon Iver, and Leaneagh individually with Boys Noize, Lane 8, Sasha, Leftfield, and Daniel Wohl; Olson with Swamp Dogg in addition to countless musicians from the 37d03d collective. As a result, When We Stay Alive features one of the largest musical casts of any Poliça record to date. To create the album, Olson brought his favorite collaborators into his studio for all-night sessions. He’d then send Leaneagh the files to write lyrics to while recovering at home, which she’d record alone or with engineer Alex Proctor. Drummers Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu colored the songs with a new approach – drastically changing the rhythmic dynamic from previous efforts by creating an indistinguishable hybrid of live and electronic instrumentation – and bassist Chris Bierden provided a melody-laden low-end as well as more layered backing vocals than ever before.
On Poliça’s first three albums, Leaneagh focused on restructuring the world and her relationships within it. On When We Stay Alive, she realizes the power in restructuring her inner self. The album’s title references the idea of moving forward through life – our experiences, both good and bad – and what happens next with the strength we find. “I had been living unconsciously in past trauma,” Leaneagh says. “I don’t want to deny something happened – this is not about repression – it’s about taking the power back from the past, holding the power in the present, and creating a new story for myself.”
When We Stay Alive tracklist:
1. Driving
2. TATA
3. Fold Up
4. Feel Life
5. Little Threads
6. Be Again
7. Steady
8. Forget Me Now
9. Blood Moon
10. Sea Without Blue
Poliça tour dates:
10/11 – Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle (SOLD OUT)
10/12 – Milwaukee, WI – Flannel Fest
11/23 – Eau Claire, WI – Jamf Theater *
11/26-11/27 – Minneapolis, MN – 7th St Entry (SOLD OUT)
